in thefaceofdespair€¦ · ated where blacks and whites could live, and legalised forced removals....

www.ntnews.com.au Saturday, December 7, 2013. NT NEWS. 5

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ntnews.com.au l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l NELSON MANDELA 1918-2013

in the face of despairMandela surrounded by young supporters after

addressing residents at Phola Park, a squatter settlementeast of Johannesburg, on May 31, 1992. In his speech, he

attacked then South African president Frederik W. deKlerk for being responsible for the violence that killed

scores of people in black townships

Mandela holds the football World Cup in 2004 — South Africawon the right to host the final of the tournament in 2010

Mandela raises his fist at arally in Soweto in 1990

Mandela on his release from prison on February 11, 1990

inspired by ‘‘the steady ac-cumulation of a thousandslights, a thousand in-dignities and a thousand un-remembered moments’’.

‘‘I simply found myselfdoing so, and could not dootherwise,’’ he would say.

His aims would matchthose of many other politicalheroes. But few others wereforced to persist for 50 years,for a cause that for most ofthat time appeared doomed.

And few could persevereagainst such injustice withsuch unyielding grace.

Mandela wanted democ-racy and equality for allSouth Africans.

After 1949, codes of segre-gation grew more strident.Mixed marriages were out-lawed, as was interracial sex.

The Group Areas Act separ-ated where blacks and whitescould live, and legalisedforced removals.

As a lawyer, and with aswagger, Mandela subvertedprinciples of white su-premacy, even while manywhite witnesses refused toanswer questions from ablack lawyer.

His activism, under the Af-rican National Congress um-brella, heightened as the ANCgrasped that long-held legalefforts to wrench change hadfailed. It understood thatmembers must be willing tobe jailed.

It organised illegal strikesand demonstrations. The per-sonal perils worsened.

In 1950, Mandela shelteredbehind a wall being thumpedwith bullets. Eighteen peoplewere killed in that FreedomMarch demonstration.

Mandela read politicaltheories. Photos of Stalin,Churchill, Gandhi, Roosevelthung on walls at his home.

And he continued to plotwhen he was banned frommeetings, and sometimes pop-ped up unannounced to speakat public gatherings.

Mandela copped his firstserious sentence in 1952. Yethe had stopped being over-whelmed by the state’s seem-ing invincibility.

‘‘Now the white man hadfelt the power of my punchesand I could walk upright likea man, and look everyone inthe eye with the dignity thatcomes from not having suc-cumbed to oppression andfear,’’ he said.

‘‘I had come of age as a free-dom fighter.’’

His rebellious streak ex-tended to an acceptance thatviolence (without bloodlust)was the only strategy thatcould win freedom.

Underground, leading amilitant wing of the ANC, hewas known as ‘‘Black Pimper-nel’’ in the months before hisarrest in the early 1960s. Hewore disguises to elude cap-

ture and was dressed as achauffeur when he was.

Mandela himself spoke ofclimbing a ‘‘great hill’’ whenfreedom was won only to dis-cover that more hills neededclimbing. He became thecountry’s first black presid-ent in an era of drasticchange. His grace alone didnot unpick the knot of issuesfaced by South Africa, but itcooled outbreaks of violenceand revenge attacks.

The prism of apartheid wasa cover-all indictment ofSouth Africa, but it hid social,economic and political chal-lenges that continued to fes-ter after its abolishment.

Mandela was a better saintthan politician. For one, headmitted that he too slow totackle the health crisis (hisown son died of AIDS in 2005)while in office. That his andhis nation’s path was un-charted, and that he lost hisbest years to confinement,can’t be overlooked.

First wife, Evelyn, accusedhim of abandoning his family.

‘‘The whole world worshipsNelson too much,’’ she oncesaid. ‘‘He’s only a man.’’

His oldest daughter MakiMandela resented her fatherwhile she grew up. Anotherchild (of Mandela’s six chil-dren from two wives) oncesaid that Mandela was a fath-er of a nation, but not much ofa father to his children.

Mandela’s greatness wascast long before his presi-dency, within the confines ofprison, where he did not suc-cumb to despair.

Now, pilgrims will trek apath to Mandela’s homelands,where a nation’s spiritualfather rode bulls and playedstick games, and where a boydreamt of growing up to be aclerk, but instead embarkedupon one of the most tellingjourneys in the history of themodern world.